1. Field
The present disclosure relates to computer-generated animation and, more specifically, to rendering a computer-generated animation using a dependency graph.
2. Related Art
A computer-generated animation is typically created by rendering a sequence of images, with each image depicting a computer-generated scene composed of one or more computer-generated objects (e.g., a character, tree, table, or chair). Frequently, the computer-generated images illustrate a scene containing a crowd of similar objects (e.g., multiple characters, trees, tables, or chairs). For example, a scene may include hundreds of people sitting in the stands of a stadium at a sporting event or a scene may include a distribution of trees to produce a forest effect. When the number of elements that make up a crowd is large, it is not time-effective to individually art-direct the elements. For example, it may not be time-effective to apply an individualized light setup to each element of the crowd. Instead, the elements are either grouped together and share a common configuration (e.g., using a single lighting rig to light the entire forest of trees) or the configuration is manually duplicated to produce the required effect (e.g., the lighting rig is manually reproduced and individually configured for each tree of the forest).
In addition to light sources, materials, textures, and other elements may be associated with the computer-generated objects to create realistic visual effects for the computer-generated scene. These elements may also be similarly repeated in the virtual scene. For example, a virtual scene may require configuring numerous copies of the same or similar texture, with each copy of the texture associated with a separate virtual object, in order to create realistic visual effects in the scene. Such duplication may also not be time-effective and may result in a data set that is too large to store or manipulate.
It is therefore desirable to create a system for configuring and managing the reproduction of crowds of similar elements used to render a computer-generated animation.